The Black Hundreds

Published:Pravda TrudaNo. 14, September 26, 1913.

      Published according to thePravda Trudatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages390-391.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thereis in our Black-Hundred movement one exceedingly
original and exceedingly important feature that has not been the subject of
sufficient attention. That feature is ignorant peasant democracy, democracy
of the crudest type but also extremely deep-seated.

Nomatter how much the commanding classes try to fence our political
parties off from the people both by means of the June Third election law
and by thousands of “peculiar features” of our political system, reality
has its way. Every political party, even of the extreme Right, has to seek
some sort of link with the people.

Theextreme Rights constitute the party of the landowners. They cannot,
however, confine themselves to links with the landowners alone. They have
to conceal those links and pretend that they are defending the interests of
the entire people, that they stand for the “good old”, “stable” way of
rural life. They have to appeal to the most deep-rooted prejudices of the
most backward peasant, they have to play on his ignorance.

Sucha game cannot be played without risk. Now and again the voice of
the real peasant life, peasant democracy, breaks through all the
Black-Hundred mustiness and cliché. Then the Rights are compelled to
get rid of the “inconvenient” peasant democrat. Naturally this banishment
of the most faithful Black Hundreds, their expulsion from their own camp by
the extreme Rights because of their democracy, is not without its
educational effect on the masses.

BishopNikon, an extreme Right-winger has, for instance, been forced to
abandon his Duma work. Why?

Aletter from Bishop Nikon himself, published inYeniseiskaya
Mysl,[1]gives a clear answer to this. It stands to reason that
Bishop Nikon dare not speak openly about the reasons for his
withdrawal. But Bishop Nikon, quoting a letter from a peasant, does write:
“The land, bread and other important questions of our Russian life and of
the region do not appear to reach either the hands or the hearts of the
authorities or the Duma. These questions and such solution of them as is
possible are regarded as ‘utopian’, ‘hazardous’, untimely. Why do you keep
silent, what are you waiting for? For moods and revolts for which those
same ‘undernourished’, hungry, unfortunate peasants will be shot down? We
are afraid of ‘big’ issues and reforms, we limit ourselves to trivialities
and trifles, good though they may be.”

Thatis what Bishop Nikon writes. And that is what very many
Black-hundred peasants think. It is quite understandable why Bishop Nikonhadto be removed from Damn affairs and Duma speeches for such
statements.

BishopNikon expresses his Black-Hundred democracy in arguments that
are, in essence, very far from correct. The land, bread and all other
important questions do reach the hands and hearts (and pockets) of the
“authorities” and the Duma;

The“authorities” and the Pumaprovide“such solution” to
these questions “as is possible”—and it is indeed thepossiblesolution, the one that accords with the interests and power of the
landowners who are dominant among the authorities and in the Duma.

BishopNikon realises that his Black-Hundred views are being undermined
by the real slate of affairs; they are being destroyed by what he observes
in the Puma and in the attitude of the “authorities”, etc. Bishop Nikon,
however, cannotunderstandthe reason for all this, or is afraid
to understand it.

Butreality will win through, and out of ten in any village who think
as Bishop Nikon does, nine will, in the long run, most likely prove less
obtuse in mastering the lessons of life than the bishop.

[1]YeniseiskayaMysl(Yenisei Thought)—a daily
bourgeois liberal newspaper published in Krasnoyarsk from 1912 to 1915.